I graduated mid May 2011. We got married in late May. Wes graduated in August. During that summer and through the end of August we lived off of leftover wedding gift money and a very very small income from my internship.

This was a point where I wasn’t on Weston’s bank account yet and I had no idea how much we had in that account. We asked each other before every.single.little.purchase we wanted to make. Because I had no idea what was in his account, I was always a little stressed out. I knew he was the type to try to keep track of all upcoming bills in his head and that didn’t always work well.

We didn’t have a budget until that September when Weston got a job and we moved to Longview. I wasn’t working so I took it upon myself to keep our finances in check. We still asked each other permission for everything which usually led to both of us feeling bad for either asking or saying no. We didn’t have debt and we didn’t have to pay for my medical insurance. We were in a pretty good place financially. I finally knew what was going on with our finances. I paid all our bills. I kept our budget. I did the grocery shopping. Someone had a grasp on it.

At this point we weren’t good at saving anything. We really didn’t have that much to save in the first place. I wasn’t good at actually budgeting money for bills. I knew when things were going to be paid and tried to make sure there was always money for those things, but I hadn’t figured out that allocating as you go is really the easiest way to go. Our rent was at least 2/3 of one of Weston’s pay checks, which with the way I was doing the budget, only ever left us with that other 1/3 for groceries and such for the next two weeks. We didn't have it figured out to save over the months for big purchases-- we both just assumed, that we couldn't afford to buy anything.

I will say, we never had to ask either set of parents to bail us out. We used birthdays and Christmas that year to get "big things" and money for an anniversary trip. Being completely off parents' pay rolls and having to figure out budgets for bills and expenses was new to the both of us. No more being able to ask family for a little extra cash if we accidentally over drafted. And now that we were married, random little gifts or lunches out seemed way less appealing to me than they did when it was just "Weston's money".